After a reckless shopping spree, I ditched contactless payments and bank cards to see how far £200 cash in hand would get me – and if I could improve my spending habits

If I’m lucky, I can just about squeeze a £20 note into the back of my phone case, which holds the device I reflexively tap to pay for almost everything. But this week was different. After a reckless coffee-and-clothing spending spree made a mighty dent in my bank account, I decided I needed to take action. Self-control was one option, but another more drastic route was blunt-force restriction. I would ditch contactless payments, along with debit and credit cards. Instead, I would spend a week relying solely on cash.

After subtracting the lavish lattes and Asos deliveries that had massively inflated my average weekly spend, I allowed myself £180 for the basics, including food and travel. For safety, I gave myself an extra £20. The first task was to take out £200 in cash from the ATM. But what the hell was my pin number? Thanks to contactless capabilities, I hadn’t used this all-important combination of digits in more than a year. Googling how to find it, I discovered I’d have to wait three to five working days to get a letter reminding me of it in the post. This wouldn’t do. I decided to head to my local bank to explain my predicament.

Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë is an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire that misuses Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi but makes the most of Martin Clunes

Emerald Fennell cranks up the campery as she reinvents Emily Brontë’s tale of Cathy and Heathcliff on the windswept Yorkshire moor as a 20-page fashion shoot of relentless silliness, with bodices ripped to shreds and a saucy slap of BDSM. Margot Robbie’s Cathy at one stage secretly heads off to the moor for a hilarious bit of self-pleasuring – although, sadly, there are no audaciously intercut scenes of thirst-trap Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi, simultaneously doing the same thing in the stable, while muttering gruffly in that Yerrrrrkshire accent of his.

This then is Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, or rather “Wuthering Heights”; the title archly appears in inverted commas, although the postmodern irony seems pointless. Cathy is a primped belle quivering in the presence of Heathcliff, who himself is a moody, long-haired, bearded outsider, as if Scarlett O’Hara were going to melt into the arms of Charles Manson. However, he does get substantially Darcyfied up later on, rocking a shorter and more winsome hairstyle, his gossamer-thin shirt never dry.

Keir Starmer’s future as prime minister suffered another major blow when the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called for him to go. With the cabinet rallying around him, the PM seems to be safe for now, but for how much longer? Pippa and Kiran look at what might happen next

• Please send your questions and messages for Pippa Crerar, Kiran Stacey and John Harris to politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com

This year’s set of $8m TV spots gave us new looks at alien conspiracy thriller Disclosure Day, slasher sequel Scream 7 and an unlikely new David Fincher film

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show review – a thrilling ode to Boricua joy

With Super Bowl spots now up to a reported $8-10m, the market has grown a little less welcoming to Hollywood, an industry still not quite up to pre-pandemic numbers (the global box office for 2025 was down almost $10bn on 2019).

So while last night saw us assaulted with ads for beer and, depressingly, AI, there was a continued decrease in the number of major film ads, a harder spend to justify in this weakened climate. But the biggest of guns still came out, from Spielberg to Ghostface to the Minions …

The same cabinet ministers who failed to speak up for the PM in the morning were soon offering their undying support

Not another one. On Sunday it was Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, who took one for the team by resigning over the Peter Mandelson appointment. On Monday, No 10’s head of communications, Tim Allan, did likewise without offering much by way of an explanation.

Presumably it was another effort to delay the inevitable. “We need a futile gesture, chaps.” No matter that most normal people won’t have heard of either of them. Let alone be able to identify them in a police lineup.

You could do the weekly shop on your own, or you could turn it into the ultimate compatibility test by inviting a date along. And there’s always that flatpack furniture to assemble ...

Name: Choremancing.

Age: About four months.

PM survives day of high tension after Scots Labour leader Anas Sarwar urges him to step down amid Peter Mandelson row

• How the Downing Street machine ensured Starmer survived to fight another day

• Exclusive: Top civil servant could become third key No 10 departure in days

Keir Starmer has seen off an immediate challenge to his position from Labour’s leader in Scotland, telling his MPs he was “not prepared to walk away” from power and plunge the country into chaos.

But the prime minister emerged badly damaged from a tumultuous 24 hours that brought his premiership to the brink, leaving his party united for now but fearful of what the coming days and weeks will bring.

Cap-busting tax hike will be embarrassing for the party, which has made low council tax a priority

Reform-led Worcestershire county council is likely to issue England’s largest council tax rise this April after it was given special permission by the government to increase it by up to 9%.

Worcestershire is one of a handful of authorities whose requests to be allowed to increase local rates above the standard 5% cap from April have been accepted by ministers.

Mountbatten-Windsor suspected of forwarding reports to child sex offender when he was government trade envoy

King Charles has expressed his “profound concern” over allegations about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and will “stand ready to support” the police if approached over the claims, Buckingham Palace has said.

Thames Valley police confirmed on Monday they were assessing claims that Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential reports from his role as a government trade envoy with the child sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2010.

Seamus Culleton has lived in US for two decades, married a citizen and runs a plastering business but faces deportation

• US politics live – latest updates

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record.

Seamus Culleton was a “model immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system, said his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye.